Ex-Financial Times Journalist Tom Foremski @ the Collision of Technology and Media

11

January

2012

|

01:26 AM

America/Los_Angeles

An Inside Look At Intel's Social Media Tracking Technology In Action

Above, is a demonstration of how Intel, the world's largest chip maker, uses a proprietary monitoring technology called "Social Cockpit" to analyze the flood of social media buzz generated by the massive Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.The Intel system works in real-time to identify and track individuals that have said anything online that's related to a brand, a competitor, or a specific topic. The monitoring technology determines who they are, where they work, their job, their level of online influence, and records what they said, where they said it, and when.

I'd love to know how Intel analyzes this data, then how it acts on that information?

Here are some additional details about Intel's intriguing "Social Cockpit" from inside Intel at CES...

...

By Intel Free Press

In a small private room above Intel's booth on the CES trade show floor, members of the company's social media team and a small group from WCG, a Texas-based communications agency, are monitoring the mass of conversations happening around CES.

They are using a proprietary Adobe Air-based desktop application to collect and make sense of the buzz generated online by people either attending or following CES on blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The goal: measure the pulse and meaningful movements of the social Web, something akin to how the Bloomberg Terminal gives minute-by-minute information about stock markets and financial news.

"We can see live 'the share of voice' for companies like Apple, Google, Intel, HP and Microsoft and see how it changes during news announcements or keynotes," said Aaron Strout, a group director at WCG.

Strout's team is tracking much more than just CES Twitter hashtags. They have crafted a complete "social cockpit" based on the agency's proprietary search and analytic software that tracks and collects data such as Facebook Newsfeed posts and Likes, Tweets that mention leading tech brands, Fan Page and Twitter follower growth, popularity of YouTube videos as well as posts from top technology blogs and forums.

The cockpit serves as a constantly updating dashboard that fills several large monitors so the teams can track in real time who is getting share of voice, and generally, what people are saying and about what products and what companies.

"We can identify who is talking online about a company or a product at CES," said Strout. "Are they from the general public? Are they influencers? Are they company representatives? And from this we look at what company and product they're talking about and what hashtags they are using."

"There seems to still be high expectation around tablets," said Strout about 6 hours into the first official day of CES. "But we're seeing more mentions of mobile in general and about Android specifically and Ultrabooks, shifting the weight away from the specific topic of tablets."

Strout says he's taking an even deeper dive into buzz around Ultrabooks to see how CES is impacting a handful of Ultrabook makers. Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Toshiba were all showing up as of late Tuesday afternoon before Dell announced its new XPS13 Ultrabook during [Intel President and CEO] Paul Otellini's keynote later that day.

Acknowledging that others may be using competitive monitoring technology such as Radian6, Strout still believes his team is collecting and presenting analyses swiftly and perhaps more actionable than anyone else at CES.

"The way of the future is to collect data then apply logic and algorithms to create an easily digestible story that you can act upon," he said.